The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2015, and October 31, 2016 (see FAQ for exceptions), are automatically nominated for the 2016 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on November 3, 2016, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

When a publicist stresses the uniqueness of the book she or he is handling, I feel lucky that the form of communication is almost always email and not by phone. If it’s by phone, I usually feel tempted to blurt out, “But three weeks ago there was another novel set in Prague in the 19th century by a talented debut writer,” and saying that can feel uncomfortable all around. You’ve got to feel a little sympathy for a ...

Unpretentious, elegiac, whimsical, quirky, affecting: to describe Anne Tyler’s novels, critics routinely use adjectives that are antonyms of one another. That’s because Tyler creates in her novels complex, entire worlds (set in Baltimore, where she lives) that are both serious and funny in a style that doesn’t call attention to itself but is also provocative and memorable. A Spool of Blue Thread, her latest, follows the life and memories of social worker Abby Whitshank and her marriage to Red Whitshank ...

My friend George Nicholson died on Feb. 3 at the age of 77. At the time of his death, he was a respected literary agent at Sterling Lord Literistic for writers of children’s and YA books, but he had also been a groundbreaking editor and executive who changed the way that children read. Leonard Marcus, the children’s book historian, writes in Minders ofMake-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature that George’s innovations compelled children’s book publishers ...

The only thing stranger than learning that David Duchovny, who’s played a few memorable cool cats on TV, has written a debut novel about a cow is that the cow, Elsie Bovary, talks like a sassy Valley Girl. “Life on a farm. It’s pretty chill,” she explains in Holy Cow. “Spend a lot of time out in the field hanging with my bffs, getting the hairy eyeball from the bulls.” For all her apparent vapidity, though, Elsie is ...

If there’s a writer alive who doesn’t have an odd story about how he or she got published for the first time, that person might not be a writer. Gail Godwin, who’s been a finalist for the National Book Award three times and published five best-sellers, should receive some kind of award for perseverance, though. Her first editor, David Segal, died at the age of 42 the day before she was supposed to meet him for the first time. He ...

The first thing Sharon Draper will tell you about her 1994 debut novel, Tears of a Tiger, is that the race of the protagonist isn’t an issue in the book (actually, that’s the second thing; the first, she notes with evident pride, is that Tears of a Tiger is still being taught in schools all these 20 years later). Draper’s career was ignited when she won Ebony’s short story contest in 1991. Alex Haley wrote her a letter congratulating ...

In a few cases, the books that I think are going to garner a lot of attention in the next three to four months overlap with the ones chosen by our editors (which either means they’re the intelligent ones, or I am. Which is it? Wait…don’t answer that). We always hope the books we care about the most get attention from the rest of the media, but even if you don’t see these titles below covered widely or hit the ...

We talk to the director of 'Regarding Susan Sontag' about her new documentary

By
Claiborne Smith
on
December 7, 2014

Susan Sontag photographed by Andy Ross/Courtesy of HBO.

For many years, and for many Americans, Susan Sontag was—and, you could argue, still is, even though she has died—the single example of what an American public intellectual is, if that’s something many Americans think about. Essayist, novelist, human rights activist, a one-time sex symbol, frequent star on humanities syllabuses, on TV Sontag could seem brusque, forbidding and imperious. You could say that she had little patience for thinkers she was assigned to debate on news programs except that she ...

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